Messages

Thanks Walter.
Cheers.

Hi all,
I've just started getting back into my Cam after a long break.
Am I correct in remembering at one point ML had a feature to
record audio only as a wav? Is it still in there somewhere if so?
I've just loaded the latest build but can find any options like that..
Thanks,
Merry Christmas

Hi, thanks, I noticed them but had them set wrong. All good now.
Thanks again.
Cheers

Is there any way to do turn off the live view display when shooting FPS override to save some battery power?
Thanks.

Hi, that mic won't be up the quality of the zoom. Also, from the look of the capsule arrangement it is two omni directional electret condensors,
so they pick up sound from all directions rather than just in frony. This means that for dialogue you will get a lot of background noise or room sound as well as the dialogue. Omnis are good for atmos and ambience type recording, but for dialogue you really want a unidirectional mic (also called cardioid).

Don't know about bit depth of the 600, you could shoot a short movie clip and import it into a video editing program or use a file inspector and it will likely tell you what it is.

Hi I don't have a 5D but I would suggest :

- Don't use the gain in ML, have it set to zero and use the preamp gain to set the levels (peaking at around -10) as the preamp will
  be better quality most likely.
- Disable auto gain on everything, camera and preamp if it has it.
- Set the Canon menu to manual audio control.

Cheers.

The only catch with a usb mic is that the digital audio converter in them is pretty low grade. A decent portable recorder will have buch better audio quality.

THere's an option to turn audio up or down if you cover the sensor and use the arrows, so if you see the levels getting to hot you could use it to know to turn it down.

I had a look at my 64g card, but I can't tell what it is because the label got ripped off it by some sticky tape.
Woops..

Hi, maybe it is an SDXC issue? I don't have my camera here so can't check, but I run a 64gb card without a problem, but I don't know from memory if it is HC or XC. I'll have a look later when I get home but hopefully someone else will have an idea before then..
The blinking led without booting usually means you have the wrong firmware version, but I don't know if that's the case here.
Have you checked you have the right version of the Canon firmware in your camera?

Hi, you should only need to update your camera firmware once. It stays in the camera, so once it's done you shouldn't need to do it again.
Is your 64 gb card dslr bootable?
How are you making it bootable?
I format in the camera, then use Macboot program on my Mac to make the card DSLR bootable, then copy the ML files over to the card.
You are copying all the files? You don't need some of them but safest to copy them all if you're unsure.
You definitely have the autoexec file on your card?

Cool, glad you got it sorted.
Cheers.

Hi, sorry, just got home and checked my camera, didn't have it when I posted before - On mine you hold in the AV button, not the Q button, and turn the wheel to change aperture. If you just change the wheel without holding any buttons in mine changes shutter speed.
I don't know why yours has an A in front of it... do you mean on the display there is an 'A' in front of the shutter speed number?
Basic question, but you are in movie mode, not photo mode with live view on the screen, as in the dial on top of the camera turned all the way clockwise? Also , in the canon menu, you have 'movie exposure' set to manual?

The mic socket has 3 lugs that are soldered to the circuit board inside the camera. It's most likely one lug has broken, and it could probably be fixed by resoldering rather than needing to replace the socket. The trick is getting the camera apart to get access to the circuit board.
I had a look and there are a few small screws around that point, but it's hard to say without pulling it apart.
If the board can be got to it would be a rather simple fix to solder the socket again, not expensive at all.
Having said all that, you could get it apart and find the actual socket has cracked, which would mean replacing it. If you bought the socket from an electronics supplier like Digikey, it would cost about $2 for the part.

It should adjust by turning the wheel up by the shutter knob while holding the 'Q' button.
You can also push the Q button once then use the arrow buttons to select any of the settings on the display, then adjust them with the wheel.
If you can't see the settings on the display, pushing the 'display' button next to the menu will bring them up.

Turn the auto gain off in ML. It makes levels inconsistent as it tries to level out the sound but lags and you end up with levels all over the place. Set a good level as mentioned here. If you need to turn any parts up you can do it in post.

Hi, there a few reasons you might want to feed into the camera, the most common one being you can't be bothered syncing the sound later.
You could use the in built mics on the Tascam which are not only better than the camera mic, but are also stereo, and you'd get a better sounding stereo audio track on the video in camera. Because the Tascam has xlr inputs with 48 volt phantom power, you could also use better quality condenser microphones, and get an even better stereo (or mono if you choose) audio track, and still record it onto the video, so later on you don't have to resync the external recording.
Even if you are using the external recording and resyncing it later, having exactly the same audio on both the recorder and camera means later on when you zoom in on the waveform to match sync, the waveforms will be exactly the same to look at, whereas if you use the camera mic they will look a little different even though it's the same sound.
The other thing that can make it a little trickier with syncing later is how far the camera is from the audio source. Sound travels at roughly 1 foot per millisecond (not exactly, but easiest rounding of number to remember) so if you have a boom or lav mic right by the actor, but the camera is 15 feet away, the camera mic will pick up the sound 15 milliseconds later than the boom/lav. So when you sync to the camera mic, you can be slightly out. 15 milliseconds maybe some people wouldn't notice, but 1 frame at 24 fps is about 41 milliseconds, so if there's 20 feet between the boom and the camera you are talking half a frame out.

Still none of this means you cant just record to the Tascam and sync to the camera later, it just makes things easier.

Hi, this isn't exactly hardware, but thought it should go here, please move if it should be somewhere else.
Just a heads up, the Canon EOS utility doesn't currently work with the new Mac Mountain Lion OS (10.8 ). Canon are supposed to
be releasing an update later this year, but for now it's a no go, so if you use EOS to load picture styles or remote shoot with
a Mac, you should probably give the new OS a miss for a while.
Cheers.

Good to hear Lauren. 64 gig cards rule.. they store more than an Ipad!
Well done.
Cheers.

Hi, I use 64 gig cards with macboot no problems.
Have a look up in the right top corner of the macboot interface
and there should be a drop down selector (max card size) where you choose the size of the card you are working with.
If yours it set to less than 64gb then it will say no suitable card found or something like that.
Change the drop down to 64gb, check the make dslr bootable box and click prepare.
Then just copy the ML files onto that card.
If you are running ML already on other cards then your camera has already had the bootflag prepared and you don't need to do it
again for every card, just copy the ML files onto it.

NOTE : If you are running Mountain Lion OS you need to run an extra script as it messes with permissions.
Go here and read the notes about a quarter of the way down the page for Mountain Lion Users:
http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/macboot/macboot.html

Hi, what are you planning on running from the drive?
Keep in mind things like photo editing effects and video fx are rendered in ram, so where the difference in speed between the 2 drives would be noticeable is in using a program that needs to pull a lot of info from a drive at one time. In my case, I use audio software that plays a lot of audio tracks at once. With a Sata drive some of thee are loaded into ram and played from there, but with a SSD it doesn't need to be loaded into ram so it can all be played straight from the hard drive.
If you aren't using programs that need to pull alot of data off the drive in realtime then I would go for the slower bigger drive. In using normal system type stuff I don't think the difference between the 2 SSD's will frustrate you, but running out of space quickly will.
What are the difference in read/write times and what sort of stuff are you using the computer for?

Hi Michael, we use a few different solutions depending on the setup. We have a zoom H4 and a fostex field recorder which is no longer made, we also gave a portable dat recorder with timecode but that's gets the least use nowdays.
I really like the zoom, the only pita is that it really eats batteries if you are using mics that need 48 volt phantom power, which most of ours do. If we need longer battery time the field recorder and dat both have NiMH battery packs which run longer. You can always carry extra batteries for the zoom, but it gets a bit noisy as the batteries run down when you are using phantom power, so you need to keep an ear on it.
If your using battery powered mics the zoom is handy, or the other good option is the juiced link preamp, both of these you can just plug into the camera and save having to sync audio later.

My main thing is music recording, so I'm generally using large diaphragm condenser mics and because it's a music performance it's often considered acceptable to have the mics in shot so I'm usually using whatever mic pattern works best for the sound. With presenter/interview type stuff that's a no go, so Sennheiser 416's are the mic of choice (but a lot of other shotgun mics work just as well)set just out of shot and making sure there is no shadow visible, or if using lav mics I really like Sanken Cos-11's.

In a studio or inside location I'll use separate mic pres and record to a Macbook Pro with a guide track also being recorded to the camera. For that sort of setup I use an RME interface for up to 10 tracks and over that I have a Solid State Logic converter that takes up to 48 inputs.
I record into Cubase, but a lot of people use Protools as well. Cubase is just easy for me as it's what I use in my studio so I know it well.
In the past I've been the music recording engineer for live filmings of bands that have been multitrack audio along with multicam shooting and we have used a digital slate to send timecode to all the cams and the multitrack recorder but nowdays it seems pretty easy to sync sound just using the guide off the camera and a slate clap. It's not the mega pro way to do it, but whatever works for your budget hey..

For what you want, if you are not needing more than two mono tracks or one stereo at a time I'd just look at something like the zoom. As far as mics if it's for dialogue I still lean towards mics like the 416 that are 48V powered rather than battery powered electret mics. They just sound better. Electrets are fine for atmos recordings and buzz tracks etc. If you need more tracks you could buy a mid priced firewire or thunderbolt interface and plug the mics into that into that, but obviously won't work of batteries on a mountain side somewhere.

Also, if I had to make one suggestion as someone who's had to work with a lot of recorded sound from shoots - the biggest problem we always come up against is waaaay too much room sound on the dialogue. Put carpets down out of shot, hang blankets up over light stands out of shot (but don't set them on fire accidentally) anything that fills up the empty space off camera will deaden the recorded dialogue down and help it sound better. This is where lav mics are great, but they aren't always possible.

Good point Alex, I was thinking there were separate analog gains, but didn't have the camera with me when I posted.
I guess you could still do it if you are using an external preamp.
If anyone really wanted to do it without an external preamp it could be done fairly simply by making a short stereo extender cable with what's called a T-pad on 1 side, which is constructed with simple resistors. Plenty of info on google about how to construct them and calculate resistor values for various db signal reduction. Bit off topic, but just in case I got someone's hopes up..
Cheers.

Hi, you can either set it to external or auto int/ext. On auto mode it will switch to external once you plug the mic in.
The AT is battery powered, so you can turn the mic power off, and don't worry about stereo mono (I don't think there's a setting for it anyway?) because the plug on the mic is mono it will just record the same thing to both channels on the mic.
WORTH NOTING - because you are recording the same mono audio on both channels and can control the level of each channel independently, what some recordists like to do is set the left channel for what they consider to be optimal (say, main body of audio around -20, with louder bits peaking up to somewhere between -15 and -10) the set the right channel for about 10db lower.
What this gives you is a backup channel so if something is unexpectedly loud on the left channel and distorts it, you have the lower volume right channel as well which because it's lower level isn't distorted. You can then just paste the section from the right channel over the left channel in post production and bring the level up to match.
Cheers.

Hi David,
I find the auto internal/ext mic setting easiest, that way when you plug the mic into the camera it will automatically switch to external.
Because the MKE400 is a powered mic you can turn the mic power off (in the ML audio settings page) if you'd like to save a little of your camera's battery, but you do need the power on when using the camera's internal mic. ALSO - make sure you turn the auto gain off using the ML audio menu.


a few things to check for starters on the MKE400 mic - not because I think you're stupid, just as a good checklist.

1) There's a battery in the mic with a good amount of charge left in it.

2) You have the power switch set to on. ALSO - there are two settings on the power switch. The setting that will match the internal mic level closest will most likely be with the switch to the far left. If you have the switch in the middle on the setting that has a symbol that looks a bit like a carrot above it (what is that supposed to be anyway?), this will cut out the bass to some extent, which will make the sound seem quieter than the internal mic.

3) VOL setting on the mic. This switch will be closest to the internal mic level when set to far right (the + sign). Switched to the left (- sign) will drop the input sensitivity down, which is great for recording really loud things, but will be lower input level than the internal mic.

A couple of other things to think about - 
- The Sennheiser is a stereo mic (I believe, I don't have one to check) while the internal mic is mono. By the very nature of the way they work, the stereo will be a little quieter than a mono mic going into the same system, so it will need more gain than the internal to get the same record level.

- Due to a few design reasons, different mics will simply have slightly different output levels and will all need different levels of gain to get to the same level in the camera. Even very similar designed mics using one or two different components can have slightly different output levels.

- In the case of the MKE400, it also has a different pickup pattern to the camera mic. It is what's called hypercardiod or lobar or supercardiod, which is like an audio version of a telephoto lens - it's strongest sensitivity is straight in front, while sounds that aren't straight in front (called off axis sounds) will be faint. In the case of the internal mic, it is omnidirectional so it picks up sound from everydirection, which can make it sound louder depending on where all the sound is coming from. ie - a sound that is 90 degrees to the left of the camera will sound louder on an omni mic than on a hypercardiod.

- So the simple answer is if you have all the mic switches set right, you need more gain for the MKE400 than the internal mic. You can do this with an external preamp like the juiced link or you can use the camera's gain via the ML audio page. FOr a studio setup I'd think about something like the juiced link as it is a pretty quiet preamp, but for run and gun style shooting where you don't want to carry extra gear, use the camera internal gain in the ML audio page. NOTE - use the analog gain, not the digital. I use this method with a stereo mic I built for my camera that is powered from the camera's internal power and it works great. I might post a thread about it some time.

ALSO - don't equate 'louder' with 'better'. You can comfortable record your audio around -20 on the meter and it will be fine. You can always normalize the level in post. In the recording studio we generally record at around -20 with peaks hitting around -15 to -12.
Hope all that helps rather than confuses, but if it creates any questions just ask.
Cheers.